At Least One in Four of All Births Paid by Medicaid, Study Says

A friend of mine recently cited a little-discussed fact about births and Medicaid that I was previously unaware of. This friend told me that about 50% of all of the births in the state where I live were paid for by Medicaid. My friend cited this fact as proof of the need for a social safety net. But personally I was a bit shocked when I heard that figure, so I decided to do my own research. As it turns out, my state is far from the worst in this category.

The Kaiser Family Foundation Medicaid Budget Survey

Since the year 2000, the non-profit Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation (named after the same Henry J. Kaiser that founded the Kaiser Permanente health maintenance organization, or “HMO”), publishes its annual Medicaid Budget Survey. The report is traditionally released each Fall and tracks trends in Medicaid spending and enrollment, as well as Medicaid policy actions around eligibility and enrollment, provider rates, provider taxes/fees, premiums and cost-sharing, benefits and pharmacy, long-term care and delivery system and payment reform.

As part of the 2016 Kaiser Family Foundation Medicaid Budget Survey, states were asked to report the share of all births in the state that were financed by Medicaid during the most recent 12 month period for which the respective states had data available. All fifty states reported data from 2010-2016, which varied by calendar year, state fiscal year, and federal fiscal year. The data provided by the states shows a disconcerting level of reliance on public funds to cover the medical costs of bringing a new life into this world.

At Least One in Four American Births Are Funded by Medicaid

The state to report the lowest share of births financed by Medicaid was the State of New Hampshire, but they still reported a whopping 27% Medicaid coverage rate. The state with the highest Medicaid coverage rate was New Mexico at a double-whopping, no make that a triple-whopping, 72%! So according to this study, the medical costs of at least one in four births in the United States are being paid for by the taxpayer. One in four American newborns are being brought into this world by parents incapable of footing the cost of that choice. One in four American newborns are coming into the world dependent on the government, right out of the womb.

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition. – Thomas Jefferson, 1787

In 1965, Congress enacted the Medicaid Act, 42 U.S.C‎.S. § 1396 et seq., as Title XIX of the Social Security Act. Medicaid is a jointly financed federal-state cooperative program designed to help states furnish medical treatment to their needy citizens. Those needy citizens are people whose income and resources are determined to be insufficient to meet the costs of necessary medical care and services. States devise and fund their own assistance programs, subject to the requirements of the Medicaid Act, and the federal government provides partial reimbursement.

A Consequence-Free Environment

Helping out the less fortunate to get proper health care is a laudable goal. But financing pregnancies is not the same as providing aid to treat illness or maintain health. Every pregnancy requires two people to make a conscious decision to engage in intercourse, with the obvious exception of forcible rape. Shouldn’t it be incumbent upon those who choose to do so to pick up the tab for the consequences of their actions?

Neither the federal government nor any state government requires the parents of a child whose birth is financed by Medicaid to reimburse the state for that cost. Is it any surprise that the percentage of births paid for by the taxpayer is so high when the government absolves these parents of any responsibility for their decision? Isn’t the state encouraging irresponsible behavior by automatically picking up the tab for the costs of something people choose to do? Is it fair to the taxpayers who are paying for this behavior?

Is the purpose of such a system really to help the needy or is the purpose of such a system to keep them needy?

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Resource Links:

• Births Financed by Medicaid | The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation
• Medicaid Enrollment by Race/Ethnicity
• More About the Kaiser Family Foundation
• https://www.kff.org/cite-and-reprint-kff/
• Do I Have to Pay Back Medicaid?

Attributions:

• This article is based on data provided by the 2016 Kaiser Family Foundation Medicaid Budget Survey credited to Vernon K. Smith, Kathleen Gifford, Eileen Ellis, and Barbara Edwards, Health Management Associates; and Robin Rudowitz, Elizabeth Hinton, Larisa Antonisse and Allison Valentine, Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured. Implementing Coverage and Payment Initiatives: Results from a 50-State Medicaid Budget Survey for State Fiscal Years 2016 and 2017, The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, October 2016.
• The information used from the Kaiser Family Foundation Medicaid Budget Survey and the info graphic, “Births Financed by Medicaid”, are used with permission under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. The author of this article thanks the Kaiser Family Foundation for facilitating the free and open reporting, discussion, comment and criticism of this subject matter.